Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) slammed the briefing given by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about the strikes against alleged drug vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific.
Speaking to Migrant Insider’s Pablo Manriquez, the lawmaker said the briefing was “a joke,” and “not a single piece of intelligence that was shared even rises to the level of others we have seen on Ukraine, China.”
.@PabloReports: Were you satisfied with the answers you’ve gotten so far in this classified briefing on Venezuela?
AOC: Oh, hell no. It was a joke. This was not a serious intelligence briefing. This was the communication of an opinion. pic.twitter.com/5rQpLMSv6F
— Acyn (@Acyn) December 16, 2025
“This was not a serious intelligence briefing. This was the communication of an opinion. if this admin wants to go to war they need to go get it from congress. and if republicans want to defend this argument that cocaine is a weapon they can go vote on that. it’s just conjecture at this point,” she added.
NewsNation reported that both Rubio and Hegseth have not discussed the briefing, but Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer slammed the officials after the meeting. He particularly criticized they refusal to show unedited footage of a second strike against a boat in September. “The administration came to this briefing empty-handed,” Schumer said.
“If they can’t be transparent on this, how can you trust their transparency on all the other issues swirling about in the Caribbean?” the senator added.
Hegseth had anticipated that the department didn’t intend to release a “top-secret, full, unedited video of that to the general public.” He did say that the Senate and House Armed Services Committees will see the unedited footage on Wednesday.
Originally published on Latin Times
